


That Moment

by lazylikesans



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Are they friends?, But I ship them, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, are they enemies?, are they lovers?, idek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-10 23:43:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17435732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazylikesans/pseuds/lazylikesans
Summary: Inspired by my favourite moment in Scream of the Shalka and what caused me to become convinced that these two are so goddamn gay. That is all.They really should change that message.





	That Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Written mostly at 1am and unbetad. Thanks for reading!

The Doctor was moping. As usual. 

When undistracted by adventure, the Doctor, the Master noticed, shifted violently from moping about his predicament in a way that could put Eeyore to shame, to rambling incessantly about whatever little nothing he’d decided to waste his brainpower on at the time. This was a moment of the former – and the Master was sick of it.

“Whatever has you so depressed, my dear?” the Master drawled, languidly draping his arms on the back of the Doctor’s chair. He absentmindedly ran his fingers through the Doctor’s slicked back hair.

“I don’t like it.”

“Like what?”

“Being trapped!”

“My dear Doctor, you are hardly trapped. You have a whole ship to make use of – why not do so?”

“That’s not what I want.”

“And what do you want? Adventure?” The Master felt the Doctor shift under his touch “Ah, so that’s it. You know, you could conjure up a virtual adventure in that VR room of yours.”

“Aah that wouldn’t be the same! I need people, real and alive and stupid…” He paused. “No offense meant, of course.”

“None taken at all, my dear nemesis. I know I am none of those things and that doesn’t bother me.” The Master wrapped his arms around the Doctor’s shoulders in a half-hearted hug, “But you appear to be describing _humans_ , and that’s quite an impossibility at the moment…”

“Yes, I’m aware!” The Doctor rose from his chair sharply and snatched a wine glass and a bottle off a side table. “I don’t need you to rub salt in the wound.” He began to pour.

“Oh dear. You didn’t even look at the label. Does this mean you intend to drink yourself silly again? Don’t you remember what happened last time you did this?”

“No, I don’t.” The Doctor snapped, taking a gulp of the wine, “Presumably because I was drunk.”

The Master sighed and rounded the chair to stand beside the taller man. He lifted both the bottle and the glass from the Doctor’s grasp before he could drink any more and placed them back on the side table. The Doctor side eyed him a disgruntled look, lips still pursed to take another sip. His lined face seemed to be displaying the emotions of a petulant child. How ironic, the Master thought. 

He took the Doctor’s hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing the pale knuckles. The Master had to admit: he too was going a bit stir-crazy. While the Master could physically never leave the TARDIS, the Doctor had a more abstract reason – he couldn’t remember how. Regeneration had affected his memories of working the TARDIS in a way that was yet to leave him, despite everything else flooding back. They’d been in the vortex for a long time.

“You certainly are being difficult, my dear. But I can be even more difficult if I wish.” Grasping on to the Doctor’s shoulders, the Master managed to push the Doctor towards the TARDIS console, and the phone that lay beside it. It was a bulky, over- the-top looking contraption that the Doctor had jiggery-pokeried up during one of his happy phases, but now only served as a reminder of his confinement. 

The Doctor himself, taken by surprise, was not able to fight back against the Master’s gentle shoves. Because, while a Time Lord is strong, an android is always stronger. There wasn’t even any hypnosis involved, the Master mused.

“What are you doing? Get off of me! Leave me be!” The Doctor protested, but the Master kept his hands firmly on his shoulders.

“Now now, Doctor. I can’t have you being miserable! Your mental state is something I’m invested in, considering my circumstances.” That wasn’t enough. “I want to see you smile again.” A blatant lie, through gritted teeth, but it worked.

“So what _are_ you doing?”

“Well, I thought it might be nice to set up the answering machine function on that phone of yours. You never know, you might have been getting plenty of calls for help from those pitiful humans, but you just don’t have a record of them. Why don’t you give it a try?”

The Doctor paused and thought for a moment.

“I suppose it’s something that needs doing…”

“Excellent! I’ll go and make some tea so you can drink something other than,” he gestured to the bottle of wine, still half full, “ _that_. I’ll be with you shortly.”

With that, the Master turned and left the console room. He made his way through the winding corridors toward the kitchen, the Doctor’s voice fading behind him. The Master wondered how his past selves would look at him – fetching tea for the man who was his dearest companion while said companion tinkered with the phone. Domestic, they would call him. But the Master had long accepted his fate as the Doctor’s maid as well as companion. And occasional babysitter.

He reached the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil. The Doctor usually enjoyed loose leaf tea, but the Master was in a hurry, and so reasoned that the man wouldn’t object to some strong Yorkshire tea bags. Arranging all he needed for tea – teapot, tea cosy, cups, saucers, milk jugs, sugar lumps – the Master piled it all onto a wooden tea tray. The tray was a dark wood, with Gallifreyan symbols etched in gold onto the edges. The Master smiled at what it represented. It didn’t matter what the words said: tea with a friend always brightens one’s day. Light in darkness.

The Master’s eyes fell to the butter dish on the countertop. When had the Doctor last eaten? The Master didn't know. Being an android, he no longer needed to eat and thus didn’t count his days in meals. But the Doctor still needed to eat, and the Master hadn’t been keeping track. Although he knew that it wasn’t really his responsibility (the Doctor was a grown Time Lord after all) he still felt slightly guilty at not knowing when the only person in his world had eaten. Pulling two slices of bread from the bread bin, he popped them in the toaster. Buttered toast and hot tea. Just what the doctor ordered.

The toast, now brown and crisp, was slathered in butter and placed on a plate next to the teapot. His handiwork was perfection as always, the Master thought, as he swiftly transported it back to the console room.

 

The Doctor looked up from the phone.

“Ah, there you are. You’ve brought tea?”

“Indeed I have. And toast.”

“Marvellous. I’ve made a recording.”

“Very good my dear Doctor. Could I take a listen?”

The Doctor nodded and pressed a sequence of buttons. He stood from kneeling and took his cup of tea from the tray. The Master noticed that the alcohol had been cleared away, and placed the tray where it once had been. The phone whirred to life and began playing a message.

_“Um, hello. The Doctor speaking… if you have a problem, please say so after the beep and I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can… Goodbye.”_

There was a pause.

“So, what do you think?”

The Master rolled his eyes. The Doctor obviously hadn’t thought about what to say and had just output whatever rubbish was in his head. Annoyance bloomed in his artificial chest. The Doctor was better than this. It was that damned depressive episode keeping him from this. All of the Doctor’s moping could be put up with, but presenting himself to others so weakly? Oh no, that wouldn’t do.

“It’s… fine, dear. It just lacks something a little Doctor, I suppose. You don’t sound like yourself.”

“Oh?”

“No. Not at all. Imagine if some poor human, a girl I’d suppose, calls. She’s distressed out of her tiny mind, wishing for a saviour, and she gets a message that sounds like some wimp of a child with his first phone!” The Master straightened his collar. “I think you need something different.”

“Perhaps you’re right. Alright, let me think.”

Silence settled over the TARDIS. Only the ticking of a clock and the gentle whirring of the phone could be heard.

“I’ve got it. Let’s see.”

The Doctor slowly knelt in front of the phone, placing his teacup on the floor. The Master silently watched on. A beautiful idea had replaced the annoyance and taken hold of his mind. Oh yes, it was devilish indeed. No one could say the Master had gone soft with a scheme like this.

He softly padded behind the Doctor. There his nemesis was. Totally helpless and in his grasp. He was the Master, and the Doctor would obey him.

The Doctor pressed a button. The phone came alive. He took a breath.

The Master pounced.

 

Grabbing the Doctor by the underarms, the Master began to tickle. Barely a word was uttered before the sensation reached the Doctor’s brain and he began to laugh, choking out his words. 

"Heh-hello, you've reached the good ship TARDIS. We're rah-hather busy at the moh-homent.” Pure laughter took him for a moment, “Just leave a message after the beep and we'll try to get back to you before you called- stop that!"

A squeak left the Doctor as he collapsed, knocking his teacup in the process, still laughing. The Master quickly reached over the sprawled Doctor to turn off the recording and save it for the answering machine. He sat on top of the Doctor, pinning him to the ground. It felt good to see the Doctor smile. A happy Doctor was an interesting Doctor, he reasoned to himself.

“Oh, you absolute idiot! Ha hah!” The Doctor wheezed through laughs. “What was that for??”

The Master put on an exaggerated thinking face.

“Ooh well, let’s see, it suddenly occurred to me that you might be utterly boring again and so I thought that I ought to help you. And I live to ruin your life.”

“I am aware… of that.” The Doctor’s breathing slowed as he regained his composure. “So why am I down here?”

“Because, my dear Doctor,” the Master pressed his lips to the Doctor’s forehead in a tender kiss, “I like it like this. Me controlling you instead of the other way around. Makes a change, does it not?

“Yes, I suppose it does.” The Doctor sighed, closing his eyes. “And now, we wait for a call.”

The Master leaned into the crook of the Doctor’s neck. The Doctor wrapped his arms around him, pressing a kiss in return to the top of his head.

“We wait indeed, my dear.”

It was nice to see him smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, I wrote this mostly to procrastinate writing an essay that's now 3 days overdue! Another fun fact, this thing ended up being longer than the essay I need to write! Ah, university is fun.
> 
> Anyway, I recently got into Scream of the Shalka and I fell in love! I need more of these two (and Alison!).
> 
> The animation's awful, and the voice acting is pitchy, but I love it all the same. Might write more of this universe, actually...


End file.
